Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1887-08-29
W0MAN'S NOBLE WORK
AN RLOQURNT DISCOURSE DELIVERED BY
DR. TALNAGg, LAST SUNDAY.
Is Han Superior to Woman in Intellect Her Hear
and Brain Can Overly Any Barisr-En-
cOuragemeAt Of WifsS Voice
WOmal'S Influence Eternal.
Sosiai Tsieordrl % he Reois,er.

Special Ttegrdrl 10 the Register.
TIE HAMPToNs, August 28.-"Woman'
Opportunity" was the subject of discourse
by the Rev. 7. De Witt Talmage, d. D.,
to-day, and his text, $50 God created man
in His own image, the image of God
created He him; male and female created
He them. ."-Gencsis i, q. Following i:
the sermon in full:
In other words, God, who can make nc
mistake, created man and woman for q
specific work, and to move in particular
spheres-man to be regnant in his realm
woman to be dominant in hers. The
boundary line between Italy and Switser
land, between England and Scotland, i:
not more thoroughly marked than this
distinction between the empire masculine
and the empire feminine. So entirely dis,
similar are the fields to which God has
called them that you can no more compare
them than you can oxygen and
hydrogen, water and grass, trees and stars.
All this talk about the superiority oi one
sex to the other sex is All everlasting waste
of ink and speech. "A jeweler may have a
scale so delicate that he can weigh the dust
of diamonds, but where are the scales so
delicate that you can weigh in them affec-
ton against affection, sentiment against
sentiment, thought against thought, soul
against soul, mans world against wo-
mans world? You come out with your
stereotyped remark, the man is superior to
woman in intellect; and then l open on
my desk the swarthy, iron-typed, thunder
bolted writings of Harriet Mar
ineau, and Elizabeth Browning and
George Eliot. You come on
with your stereotyped remark about
woman's superiority to man in the item
of affection; but ask you where was there
more capacity to love than in John the
disciple, and Robert McCheyne the Scotch
man, and John Summerfeld the Methodist,
and Henry Martin the missionary? The
heart of those men was so large, that after
you had rolled into il two hemispheres,
there was room still left to marshal the
hosts of heaven, and set up the throne OF
the eternal Jehovah. deny to man the
throne intellectual. deny to woman the
effectional No human phraseology will
detinethe spheres, while there is an in
tuition by which we know when a man is
in his realm, and when woman is in her
realm, and when either of them is out of
it. No bungling Legislature ought to at
tempt to make definition, or to say:
This is the line and that is the line" My
theory is that if woman wants to vote,
she ought 10 vote, and that II
man wants to embroider and keep
house, he ought to be allowed toembroider
and keep house. There are masculine wO-
men and there are effeminate men. My
theory is, that you have no right to inter
fere with any ones doing anything that is
righteous. Albany and Washington might
rs well decree by legislation how high n
brOwn.t .thrasher should fly, or how deep a
tout should plunge, as to try to seek out
the height or the depth of woman's duty.
The question of capacity will settle final
ly the whole question, the whole subject.
When q woman is prepared to preach, she
will preach, and neither Conference nor
| L
man is prepared TO move in highest COM
mcrcial spheres, she will have great infiu-
ence on the Exchange, and no boards OF
trade can hinder her. l want woman to
understand that heart and brains can.
OVERLY ANY BARRIER
that politicians may set up, and that
nothing can keep her back or keep her
down but the question of incapacity.
There are women, know, of most un-
desirable nature, who wander up and down
the country-having no home of their own,
or forsaking their own homes-talking
about their rights; and we know very well
that they themselves are Fl neither to vote,
nor fit to keep house. Their mission seems
to be to humiliate the two sexes at the
thought of what any one of US might he
come. No one would want to live under
the laws that such women would enact, or
to have cast upon society the children such
women would raise. But shall show you
this morning that the best rights that wo-
men can own, she already has in her pos
session; that her position in this coun-
try at this time is not one
of cOmmiseration, but one OF
congratulation; that the grandeur and
power of her realm have never yet been
appreciated; that she sits to-day on q
throne so high, that all the thrones OF
earth piled on top Of each other would not
make for her footstool Here is the plat
form on which abe stands. Away down
below it are the ballot-box and the Con-
gressi0nal assemblage and the Legislative
hall. Woman always has voted and al
ways will vote. Our greatgrandfathers
thought they were by their votes putting
Washington into the Presidential chair.
No. His mother, by the principles she
taught him, and by the habits she incul-
Gated. made him President. 1t was q
Christian mothers hand dropping the bal
lot when Lord Bacon wrote, and Newton
philosophical, and Alfred the Great gov
erued, and Jonathan Edwards thundered
of Judgment TO come. How many men
there have been in high political station,
who would have been
| INSUFFICIENT To STAND THE TEST
to which their moral principle was put,
| had it not been for wiie's voice that en-
couraged them TO do right, and a wife's
PRAYER that sounded louder than the clam
or OF partisanship! Why, my friends, the
right Of suffrage, as we men exercise it,
seems to be feeble thing. You, Chris.
tian man, come up to the ballot-box and
you drop your vote. Right after you
comes libertine, or sot-the offscouring
of the street-and he drops his vote; and
his vote counteracts yours. But if in the
quiet of home life daughter by her Chris
tan demeanor, wife by her industry, a
mother by her faithfulness, casts vote in
the right direction, then nothing can resist
it, and the influence OF that vote will
throb through the eternities-
Ny chief anxiety then is, not that woman
have other rights accorded her; but that
she, by the grace Of God, rise up TO the
appreciation of the glorious rights she al.
ready possesses This morning ] shall
only have time to speak of one grand and
all-absOrbing right that every woman has.
and that is to make home happy. That
realm no one has ever disputed with her.
Men may come home at noon or at night,
and they tarry q comparatively little
while: but she. all day long, governs II,